Bryan Pieper's Blog : 2009

Hope you and your family had a wonderful Christmas and have a Happy New Year.

Have you heard anything about the rumored Apple tablet device?  There is plenty of chatter about the mythical device, so I won’t mention any speculation here.

It is amazing how Apple has managed to generate an extreme amount of publicity about this device.  2010 has even been dubbed as the year of the tablet.There is no other brand on the planet that can generate this kind of buzz and speculation about a product that doesn't exist.

If it surfaces, the tablet could the best thing since the sliced bread! I currently own a Macbook and would love to add this device to my collection. Though, if they make the bonehead move of tying it to a cell phone provider, I’m out. 

Google announced yesterday that they are combing relevant results with the real-time web.  The results include data from Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, Jaiku and Identi.ca. 

Here is a sample result showing real-time data:

This has been talked about around the blogosphere for the past few months. Glad to see this incorporated in a way that doesn’t exclude the relevant results. To see more trending topics, check out Google Trends.

On a side note, Bing has had a twitter feed for a little while.  Haven’t found it to be any more useful than the existing twitter search functions.  What do you think?

Goodbye Delta, hello LUV! Thank you Southwest Airlines for not making me pay a fee to bring my luggage.

Last month, we traveled to Omaha to visit my northern relatives. I researched this trip for about 3 months looking for the best deal. I finally found a flight on Southwest.com. The deal was not only cheaper than the rest, but it didn’t include hidden fees to bring my clothes.

Seriously, why is it that most of the other airlines want to discourage you from bringing your luggage? Doesn’t the traveling experience most often include a suitcase or two? It is nice to know that LUV is still focused on the customer. They even let me chose my own seat... double bonus! Southwest, you have gained a customer today for not charging me to bring my luggage. Way to go!

What are your thoughts on bag fees?

Ever thought that Twitter isn’t here to stay? Think again.

A few days ago, LinkedIn and Twitter launched a partnership to allow you to cross-publish your LinkedIn status update to Twitter and visa-versa.  For the full breakdown on LinkedIn’s blog, click here.

Now, only if my TweetDeck client had integration with LinkedIn! Happy tweet-IN!

I was reading Seth Godin’s blog the other day and was intrigued by his take on Dunbar’s Number. It got me thinking about the real value of a your friend/follower/network beyond 150.

According to Wikipedia, Dunbar's number is a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships.

When Dunbar came up with this number, the idea of Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace and Twitter did not exist. What you are your thoughts and what is your tipping point?

When was the last time you used any type of testing in your email campaigns? Do you test the subject lines? How about segmenting your lists? What about testing timing? According to emarketer.com, between May and June 2009, 37.1% of marketers do not test their email campaigns.  

How about starting with a simple A/B test.  Here are a few quick steps:

1. Take your list and define a small sample size that you believe will be statistically representative. Ten percent is a good number if you cannot decide.
2. Grab two samples of your defined size. Label one “A” and the other as “B.”
3. Define your parameters and how you will measure the response:
   1. the subject line,
   2. a design layout change,
   3. timing of the message,
   4. including live chat or no chat,
   5. link placement or quantity in the email body, etc.
4. Setup two email campaigns.  Send the first message to List “A” and the second message to List “B” with the parameter changes.
5. Run an analysis to determine which list had the best response.
6. Send final message with the parameters that worked best to the remainder of your list.

Pretty straight forward, huh?

To help you out, here is a Python script for performing A/B List splitting.   Download the source code.  This script will create two random samples from your list based on the 10 percent (or your own) sample size.  You can use the list outputs to run your A/B tests all day long.   Enjoy!